Rain that falls on our mountainous catchment areas north-east of Melbourne travels downhill and eventually into a reservoir. Melbourne Water manages Melbourne's catchments, which are protected from people and pollution, making our drinking water of a very high quality. Want to know more?
Water Quality fact sheet (120 KB)
Water from the reservoirs travels through hundreds of kilometres of pipes and through other reservoirs before it is stored in very large storage tanks all over Melbourne. Challenge! If you feel like doing some private investigating, you could find out where the nearest storage tank is near your house! When you turn on the tap, water travels from the storage tank through pipes, through your water meter (so we can count how much water you use and send you a bill) and out of your tap! Challenge! See if you can find and read the water meter for your home!
What do you use water for at home? You can probably come up with many things! We need water for everyday things like drinking, washing, watering, and of course, flushing the toilet. Have you ever wondered where the water goes to after you have finished with it? Because the water is not clean anymore, it is called wastewater or sewage and it is sent through the drains and sewers to a special place called a sewerage treatment plant.
Wastewater from your house may have some very interesting things in it! At the sewage treatment plant they find lots of toys, mobile phones, money and sometimes even false teeth! As you can imagine, it takes quite some time to clean all the wastewater. Once it has been cleaned, most of the water is pumped out to sea. Depending on how well it has been cleaned, some of the water is recycled and re-used on farms, parks, golf courses, schools and even some people's houses! Challenge! Recycled water can be used for almost anything except drinking and personal hygiene (eg showers, brushing teeth). What do you think you could use this recycled water for at your home?
Challenge! Talk to your teacher about taking your class to the Mount Martha Sewage Treatment Plant.
Click on the link below to find out more about Melbourne's urban water cycle, and how sewerage systems used to work in the old days!
Water supply (132 KB)
History of sewerage systems (338Kb)
History of our water supply (112 KB)
Please note: South East Water Ltd grants educational institutions permission to use material from this site without incurring copywriting costs.
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